This could very well be my all-time favourite song, this classic rendition of the old Malay tune Seri Langkat by Jamal Abdillah and Amelina, her sensuous elegance and supple voice perfectly matched by his deep, old-world masculinity. Seri Langkat is presumably a destination, and those familiar with the Malay language will recognise easily the ancient charm the mere whisper of the name evokes.

Like most traditional tunes, this song is composed of pantun verses, where the first two lines act as ‘hints’, while the last two lines contain the actual messages the speaker intends to relay. There is usually no direct connection between the ‘hints’ and the ‘messages’, although occasionally one can make subtle links between the two. Seri Langkat can be classified as an old school Malay love song, which means there’s very little expression of love, at least not the kind we are used to nowadays. Malay love songs are very different from the wildly passionate, heart thumping if-I-don’t-see-you-for-even-one-day-I-will-die verses common in Middle Eastern poetry, a contemporary version of which is beautifully (if a bit comical) rendered by Lebanese singer Fares Karam in his video Khetyar 3al 3ekaza below.

Old-world Malay couples express their love and adoration through gentle teasing and offering kind advice using pantun verses playfully traded back and forth. It speaks of an innocent, bygone era when social rituals such as courtship were laced with poetry, usually avoiding in-your-face romanticism. It is really only in modern times that Malay love songs contain overt love themes, which I find a little too emo and mushy.

The pieces of advice contained in the song are mostly universal and easily understood, for example “one’s life on earth if laden with knowledge; will be admired by all”. In contrast, the fourth pantun is more culturally-specific. “Like the character of a paddy stem, the heavier it gets the lower it bows” refers to the way a paddy stem gradually bends lower as the rice grains develop and become heavier at the top. It alludes to how a person should behave; the more knowledge they gain, the humbler they should be.

Whenever I come across the word padi I go back in time to my Malay Language class in high school, where my teacher Puan Nooriza told us that apparently there were only three words that are of pure Malay origin – padi, paku and babi (paddy, iron nail and pig). This is of course an exaggerated claim, but I think it is a potent symbol of the Malay world’s long and proud tradition of openness and acceptance of foreign cultures, our ability to include and meld them into our own and become all the richer for it.